The Bastille Day, 2025
This Week in Classical Music: July 14, 2025. Bastille Day. At this time is the French nationwide vacation, and we’ll play some music from that nice nation, with none pretense of a complete survey. France has an extremely lengthy file of what we name “classical” music, courting again to medieval occasions: Leonin and Perotin lived in Paris within the second half of the twelfth to early thirteenth centuries and labored on the not too long ago constructed Notre-Dame Cathedral. They left a written file of their music, which may nonetheless be heard immediately carried out by the old-music ensembles.
The Renaissance that adopted introduced us a number of vital composers who have been both French or Franco-Flemish, from what’s now Belgium. Amongst them have been Guillaume Dufay, thought-about by many the “founding father” of Renaissance music, and Gilles Binchois; each labored within the mid-15th century. A few generations later got here Josquin des Prez, a very powerful composer of the final quarter of the 15th – first quarter of the 16th century. This vibrant milieu produced a plethora of composers, many on the French facet of the border with Flanders.
The Baroque interval was additionally wealthy in expertise: we may point out simply three stars: Jean-Baptiste Lully, François Couperin and Jean-Philippe Rameau. Right here’s a piece of a set from Les Boréades, Rameau’s final opera. Les Musiciens du Louvre are carried out by Marc Minkowski.
Considerably surprisingly, the French composers weren’t very productive in the course of the Classical period (that was the area of the Germans and Austrians), however they flourished within the following years throughout what we name the Romantic interval. Hector Berlioz, Charles Gounod, César Franck (a Belgian by start, he lived most of his productive life in Paris), Camille Saint-Saëns, Georges Bizet, and Jules Massenet are simply the best-known names; there have been many others. Berlioz stands considerably alone, contemplating each the dimensions of his expertise and the audacity of a few of his compositions. Right here’s a symphonic interlude from his opera Les Troyens, which often runs shut to 5 hours. It’s known as Chasse royale et orage (Royal hunt and thunderstorm); it’s carried out by the Orchestra of the Royal Opera Home below the route of Colin Davis.
Because the finish of the 19th century, French composers have been on the forefront, whereas Paris has became a veritable Mecca for musicians from everywhere in the world. The good Debussy was adopted by the quirky Eric Satie after which the ever-popular Ravel (we’ve giant samples of their works in our library). Les Six (Georges Auric, Louis Durey, Arthur Honegger, Darius Milhaud, Francis Poulenc, and Germaine Tailleferre) adopted. Then got here Olivier Messiaen, an ideal expertise and the inspiration for a gaggle of younger composers who utterly deserted tonality and even went past the twelve-tone system of Schoenberg and his pupils. Pierre Boulez was one among their leaders.
On the finish of WWII, in 1944, Messiaen composed a set of twenty items for solo piano titled Vingt Regards sur l’Enfant-Jésus (Twenty Contemplations on the Toddler Jesus). It was devoted to his pupil, the pianist Yvonne Loriod, who later turned Messiaen’s second spouse. Right here‘s one of many Regards, Regard de la Vierge (Contemplation of the Virgin). It’s carried out by Pierre-Laurent Aimard.
